After three years of ongoing research by an international team of scientists, a study commissioned by the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme for a first-ever comprehensive assessment of Arctic Ocean acidification was presented last week at a meeting of Arctic Council Ministers in Bergen, Norway.

“The sea ice has been a lid on the Arctic, so the loss of ice is allowing fast uptake of CO2,” said Richard Bellerby of the Norwegian Institute for Water Research, chairman of the report.

Freshwater flows exacerbating arctic ocean acidification

Ocean waters in the north are made even more vulnerable to acidification by increased freshwater flows from rivers and melting land ice. Freshwater is less able to neutralize the acidifying effects of CO2, Bellerby explains.

“Large rivers flow into the Arctic, which has an enormous catchment for its size,” he said. “There’s slow mixing so in effect we get a sort of freshwater lens on the top of the sea in some places, and freshwater lowers the concentration of ions that buffers pH change.”

Threshold passed, habitats threatened

Even given the fantasy of immediate and aggressive efforts to mitigate carbon emissions, increased ocean acidification in the Arctic (and globally) is already baked into the climatic system

“We have already passed critical thresholds. Even if we stop emissions now, acidification will last tens of thousands of years. It is a very big experiment,” says Bellerby.

Other conclusions of the study show probable impacts on ecosystems and habitats throughout the Arctic from ocean acidification – among these findings:

Due to the relatively simple food webs found in the Arctic, ecosystems are more vulnerable to changes when key species are impacted by external factors (such as acidification)

Ocean acidification is likely to directly or indirectly affect Arctic marine organisms throughout the food chain, from plankton to fish

What impacts marine organisms impacts humans as well. Arctic ocean acidification will have potentially adverse effects on commercial fisheries and marine resources used and relied upon by indigenous people

Even with stabilisation of atmospheric CO2 at 450 ppm, Ocean Acidification will have profound impacts (death and extinction) on many marine systems.

LARGE and rapid reductions of global CO2 emissions are needed globally by at LEAST 50% by 2050.

Analysis of past events in Earth's geologic history suggests that chemical recovery (normal pH for LIFE in the Ocean) will take TENS of THOUSANDS of years - while the recovery of ecosystem function and biological diversity (LIFE AS WE KNOW IT) can take much longer. (MILLIONS OF YEARS)

..:: "These are changes that are occurring far too fast for the oceans to correct naturally, said Dr Richard Feely with the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)

..:: "Fifty-five million years ago when we had an event like this (and that took over 10,000 years to occur), it took the oceans over 125,000 years to recover, just to get the chemistry back to normal," he told BBC News.

..:: "It took two to 10 million years for the organisms to re-evolve, to get back into a normal situation.

..:: "So what we do over the next 100 years will have implications for ocean ecosystems from tens of thousands to millions of years. That's the implication of what we're doing to the oceans right now."